Are Humans Reversing Cat Domestication?

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When your cat sees a stranger, does he come and snuggle close or
hiss and run away?

Whether a feline friend is a lap cat or a claws-out kitty is
largely affected by their socialization as young kittens. But at
least part of cats' friendliness may be in their genes. And the
widespread practice of spaying or neutering cats before they
are adopted may be inadvertently selecting for aloof cats, by
ensuring the friendliest animals don't reproduce, one researcher
says.

"The very cats that are the friendliest and the ones that don't
do much hunting are the very ones we are told we should be
neutering," said John Bradshaw, an anthrozoologist at the
University of Bristol in England, and the author of "Cat Sense:
How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your
Pet" (Basic Books, 2013). [ 6
Secrets to Unlock Your Cat's Personality ]

But not everyone is convinced.

Domestic and
feral cats are genetically indistinguishable, so spay/neuter
programs are unlikely to nudge the gene pool one way or the
other, said Carlos Driscoll, a University of Oxford biologist who
is studying the genome of the wildcat from which the domestic cat
emerged at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Subtle differences

Domestic cats arose from a subspecies of cat called Felis
silvestris lybica between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago in the
Near East or North Africa. But the genetic differences between
this wildcat
ancestor and its tamer offshoot are very subtle: Wild cats
and domestic cats look alike and are able to mate with one
another, Driscoll said.

Just 10 to 20 gene changes may be responsible for domestication
in the tame cats, though scientists don't know which ones.

Because so few genes are associated with domestication, spay and
neuter policies that ensure the friendliest cats don't reproduce
could be "pushing domestication backward" to a noticeable degree
in the next 50 to 100 years, Bradshaw told LiveScience.

Selecting for less-friendly cats?

To support that notion, Bradshaw conducted a simple test of
cat personality in Southampton, England: He had strangers
enter the houses of kittens in the area, try to pick up and
stroke the cats, and then watched the kitties purr or hide.

In an area where spaying and neutering rates were highest — more
than 98 percent —kitties tended to be a bit more skittish around
strangers, possibly because they have to "import" their fluffy
friends since their own pals aren't able to reproduce.
Less-affluent areas had bolder, friendlier cats. [ Images:
See How Cats See the World ]

"What we suggest is people [in affluent areas] are getting
kittens in from the countryside from feral cats that are a little
bit wilder," or from a few feral females and just a few tomcats
that are "living in the shadows," Bradshaw said.

Therefore, intensive spay and neuter programs may be artificially
selecting for the less-tame cats, he said.

"Neutering is — in terms of biology, in terms of population
dynamics — a mortality factor," Bradshaw said. "If you neuter,
you've removed its genes from the pools, so when you look at the
next population, you have to rule it out."

The study has a few caveats: It hasn't been published in a
peer-reviewed journal, and the team only looked at about 70 cats
in all.

Other solutions

And even if the findings are borne out, Bradshaw isn't suggesting
a return to the old days, when cats mated freely and the unwanted
kittens were tossed in a sack and drowned.

Cats kill billions of animals a year, so cities rightly want
to keep feral-cat colonies in check. But if that's cities' aim,
Bradshaw said, they should find the ultimate source of the
problem: food.

Identifying the genes involved in cat personality could also
help, by allowing breeders, for the first time, to select for
traits such as friendliness and gentleness, rather than just
looks, he said.

Skeptics remain

Driscoll doesn't think spay and neuter programs will make cats
any less friendly. For one, no studies have ever shown any
genetic differences between house kitties and
feral cats — which are, after all, just domestic cats that
fend for themselves and haven't been socialized to live with
humans.

Moreover, simply too many cats with too much freedom are on the
prowl for spay and neuter programs to change the entire gene
pool.

"The population of domestic cats has been stable for a very long
time," Driscoll said. "There's a lot of genetic inertia there.
You can go out and spay and neuter all the damn cats you want,
and the next year, they're all going to be back."